The Best-Laid Plans

by Henrietta Wotton

I. Profitable Losses

"Why'd you do it? Shoot Toran?"

Because he was a smug and insolent functionary who would have trembled at a cross look from me in the old days. And because he made a bargain with me and didn't keep his end of it. Certainly a Ferengi can understand that reasoning! Garak didn't choose to share his thoughts with the astonished Quark, however.

"Why did you let Professor Lang go?" he countered.

This evasion gave him some time to ponder the answer to the question the bartender should have asked: "Why didn't you turn over Hogue, Rekelen, and Lang directly to Central Command yourself, after you terminated Toran?" Why didn't he, indeed?

"I had no choice. I love her," the Ferengi replied.

"And I love Cardassia." It was another neat rhetorical turn from someone long practiced in providing information without really providing information. But Garak had no sooner said it than he realized with a shock that it was not just rhetoric; it was the truth. *I do still love Cardassia, even if she isn't very fond of me at the moment. And I seem to have gotten it into my head that the dissident movement is actually good for Cardassia--I who spent most of the last ten years ferreting out those traitors to the state* As he blathered on to Quark about the paradoxes of love, the answer to this particular paradox eluded him.

In his quarters later that evening Garak opened the last bottle of decent kanar left over from the stock he'd brought with him when he arrived on Terok Nor, branded as an exile lucky to have his scales intact. What have I been saving it for, some celebration with all the dear friends I've made here? he asked himself bitterly. He downed a glass, recorked the bottle, and turned down the endorphin level in his implant. Perhaps it was these endorphins that had deluded him into thinking it possible Toran wouldn't betray him. He needed a clear head, the reason he also wouldn't pour a second drink. Elim Garak was rarely surprised. His gift for surviving derived in large measure from his ability to think out the possible permutations and combinations of any situation far in advance, and from his ability to plan his own responses accordingly. Only once before had one of his instinctive responses surprised him.

It was during his stay on Romulus. The mission--a retaliatory assassination of a Tal Shiar operative who had terminated two Obsidian Order agents and stolen from them highly sensitive documents about improvements in Federation warp capabilities. He'd gotten into her house on the pretext of couriering a message from the Cardassian embassy and having instructions to wait for the reply. A double-agent from the Tal Shiar had vouched for him, but, still, the woman was dangerously complacent. One second after she sat down in her office to compose the reply he had the blade thrust through her second and third ribs and into her heart. He withdrew it, arranged her in her chair as though lost in thought, moved to exit the front door--and froze. A small girl, perhaps four or five, had just entered. She was staring at the bloody knife in his hand.

"Grandma says never to play with knives in the house," she scolded, already the typically smug, self-righteous little Romulan.

"Your Grandma is quite correct. I'm going to take this knife outside right away. And Grandma is attending to some important business, so you shouldn't disturb her until she calls you."

"I always do what Grandma wants," the girl replied.

"You're a very good child," he told her on his way out.

Apparently Grandma always wanted her grand-daughter to press the security alarm every time she saw a Cardassian, because he'd barely gone around the corner before the centurions arrived. Within the hour an amazingly accurate holographic image of Garak was everywhere on Romulus. He just made it into the toolshed on the grounds of the embassy garden before the Tal Shiar herded every Cardassian out of the embassy and marched them off for interrogations about the assassination. And there he remained, cold and hungry, during the three days of uproar about the incident. Finally the Central Command chief of staff and the Praetor worked out a mutually face-saving communique, Romulan troops withdrew from the Cardassian embassy, and Garak, his cover blown, crept like a whipped riding hound to the ambassador and requested diplomatic transport home. The ambassador happily complied, assigning the crestfallen operative a place on the very next ship out--in its brig.

This two-day confinement gave Garak the leisure to consider rationally what had gone wrong. His background checks had revealed the existence of the grandchild, but every source placed her with her parents on the planet's other hemisphere that day. (During the scathing dressing down he would later receive from Tain, it emerged that the premature birth of a second grandchild had deposited the little girl, unanticipated, into her grandmother's care.) He'd done a life sign scan before seeking entrance to the grandmother's house, but that didn't register the child playing at a neighbor's.

Garak ran through a number of compensatory scenarios that would have enabled him to have been aware of the child's presence and so delay the strike. Pleased that he had worked out procedures to ensure that this would never happen again, he started to drift off to sleep. At the verge of consciousness, however, a thought came to him that made him sit bolt upright. Forget contingency plans. The next time it happens, you just kill the child.

Of course. The first rule of assassins was, "Never leave a witness alive." And it wasn't as if he had considered the option and rejected it. Taken off guard, his instinctive response simply took that option out of play. How could that be? Every Obsidian Order agent knew that Cardassia's enemies were Cardassia's enemies. All were fair game in the struggle to preserve the state. Torturing children to obtain speedy confessions from their guilty parents was a tried and true interrogator's trick. Not that he'd yet used it, but he'd always known that he might have to. Well, Elim, the next time you'll break the little brat's neck, he assured himself.

Oh, and next time you're in a confined space, you won't get the shakes? Face it, you'll always be claustrophobic, and you'll never kill a child. How sentimental! He didn't even like children. Yet an honest self-assessment told him that, for some reason, it was not an action he would ever take on impulse. Obsidian Order agents don't have the luxury of working themselves up to unpleasant task, you fool. Accept that and compensate. The next time you get overconfident that your will can override your instincts, you'll end up dead.

Apparently his instincts were now telling him that the dissident movement to overthrow Central Command had Cardassia's best interests on its side. Astonishing! But was it, really? He thought back to his history books on how the military had unified Cardassia and brought it glory, conquest, and resources to fill its chronically empty belly. In those days the Detapa Council presided over the everyday life of citizens, the Order travelled to neighboring worlds in the guise of traders or scientists, sizing up the "contributions" their systems could make to the welfare of the Cardassian Union and the vulnerabilities that left them open for annexation. Then they turned the information over to Central Command and scouted out the next likely target.

Cardassia Prime had the cruelly ironic position of being a barren and unproductive planet surrounded by some of the most verdant, mineral rich systems in the quadrant. Yet necessity was the mother of invention, as Dr. Bashir had intoned on more than one occasion. While Chin'tokans, Arowathi, and Bajorans sat fat and happy using their technology for agriculture, mining, and exploration, the Cardassian engineers designed fast ships with massive firepower. Soon the inhabitants of the other worlds found themselves subject peoples, slaving away with their fancy farm machinery and ore extraction equipment in order to feed and clothe their Cardassian masters and herding into refugee camps so that their lush green valleys could welcome eager Cardassian colonists.

Over the past fifty years, however, things had started to go wrong. As Central Command grew ever more obsessed with subjugating the next system and the next, the empire's borders bumped up against territory claimed by the Klingons and later by the Federation. Prolonged hostilities ensued, and as the military stretched to its full capacity to combat these major powers from the other side of the quadrant, restive colonial populations sensed an opening and rebelled. Finally there was no choice but retrenchment. Two promising targeted systems were ceded to the Klingons, a treaty that apportioned disputed territories equally hammered out with the Federation. The various military Orders had suffered massive losses on the front lines. Still other young Cardassian lives ended regularly in the unrelenting guerrilla attacks by the Bajoran Resistance. Back on Prime, people began to grumble, to question the wisdom of the galactic policy of stake out, grab, and subdue that had so splendidly solved the problem of Cardassian scarcity for several centuries. It was becoming harder to hold onto conquered worlds, and expansionist impulses had nowhere to go. Central Command failed to develop any strategy to deal with these altered political realities, however. Instead they became consumed with the necessity to repress dissent, both in the colonies and, increasingly, at home. Instead of keeping tabs on Cardassia's enemies or evaluating fresh worlds for conquest, Garak and most of his Obsidian Order colleagues had been kept busy during the past decade ferreting out resistance sympathizers on Bajor and "traitors" amongst the civilian population on Prime. More disturbing, his own investigations had focussed of late on finding dissenters within the ranks of Central Command itself. Mostly they were impressionable young Glinns, but several Guls had been swept along to disgrace and execution for voicing seditious opinions. The father of that oh-so-arrogant prefect of Bajor, Dukat, had been one of them. Agent Entek kept insisting that even as powerful an officer as Legate Ghemor was having his doubts, but the wily Ghemor had avoided falling into any of the traps thus far set to ensnare him. (The senior Dukat, on the other hand, had practically dived head first into the one Garak had designed to bring his treachery to light.)

In the year before the Occupation ended, the Detapa Council, after decades as the puppets of Central Command, began to take notice of this dissension in the ranks and to wonder whether the reassertion of civilian rule might not be both possible and desirable. In its paranoid desire for security and control, the military had exposed its own fissures. Undercover field operatives kept reporting back to Garak that a number of high-ranking men in Central Command had taken to grumbling that the Obsidian Order had been just a little too successful, and a little too public, in its purges of the officer corps. Garak had retaliated by observing out loud at the dedication of still another military monument that the analyses of failed Cardassian military policy he wrested from so-called traitors under torture sounded far more astute than the official dispatches that poured forth from Central Command headquarters.

Three days later Tain summoned him to his office and told him he was being exiled to Terok Nor. No explanation, no appeal. Garak now had spent two years trying to puzzle out the reasons. If Tain had felt him to be disloyal to the state, to be a threat, he'd be dead. No one who knew what he knew could still be breathing, could still be able to receive back-channel information from his former colleagues, if Tain or the Obsidian Order believed him to be a traitor. Nor could he imagine that Tain disagreed with his sentiments about the disastrous consequences of the current direction of Central Command foreign policy. It was Central Command he'd angered, and Tain had clearly decided to give him up in order to ward off a three-way conflict in the government. That he'd been shipped off to live under the command of the son of one of the traitorous officers he'd snared left little doubt about who wanted him punished. Ironically, the traitorous Gul Dukat was twice the man his egotistical, self-absorbed offspring would ever be.

Despite his resolve to stop at one, Garak had to pour a second drink. Just thinking about that infernal popinjay made him livid. When Garak had arrived on the station, Dukat had summoned him to his office, gloated about his sudden reversal of fortune, and then said in his most patronizing tones, "There's really little place for Cardassian civilians here on the station. I don't know what we're going to do with you. There *is* an empty mercantile space on the Promenade. The fifth business failure there in the last two years. It's a clothing store. The problem, you see, is that we soldiers don't need much in the way of attire beyond our uniforms, and the Bajorans are too poor to buy anything. It's all I can offer you. We'll have to see if you can eke out enough latinum there to stave off starvation."

"I wouldn't worry," Garak had replied through clenched teeth. "I happen to be a very good tailor."

Dukat had laughed derisively over that one. "And I thought your only skills with needles came from sticking them into defenseless prisoners' arms. Very well, then, tailor, you can scrape by mending the Bajorans' rags and my mens' torn trousers."

Garak had given him a stiff nod and gone to explore the clothing store, but he was smiling inwardly, because that was precisely what he planned to do while biding his time.

He hadn't expected to bide his time so long, certainly not after the Cardassians withdrew from Bajor. Even Kotan Pa'Dar, that outspoken critic of every decision made by Central Command in the last twenty years, had his exile revoked and passage home offered. At the very least, Garak expected to be transferred to another Cardassian colony world. Dukat had taken great pleasure in informing him that his Cardassian transit identity card was being revoked, and he wouldn't be going anywhere any time soon. "It's bad enough that we've caved into pressure from those political allies of Pa'Dar. However, I've seen to it that he won't dare to meddle in military affairs again. Unfortunately for you, tailor, you don't seem to have any friends left on Cardassia," the Prefect had gloated. "I hear the Bajorans have gone running to the Federation for help, so perhaps your business at least will improve."

II. Maquis-nations and Collaborations

"It was a terribly exciting mission!" Dr. Bashir burbled between sips of Tarkalean tea. "Rather like one of those commando raids you read about on pre-Federation Earth. A precision strike with minimal body count. Gul Dukat's safe and sound, and the Vulcan woman is cooling her heels in a holding cell."

"You can't imagine my joy to hear that the Federation has stepped in to rescue the former commander of this station in the absence of any efforts by Central Command to retrieve him," Garak returned sarcastically.

Bashir laughed. "Apparently Central Command has about as much respect for Dukat as you do. They tried to set him up as some sort of renegade who's been smuggling weapons into the demilitarized zone. Commander Sisko believes that's just a red herring, to disguise the fact that the Cardassian government is behind this at the highest levels."

"I would agree with our esteemed commander. Subtlety was never Dukat's strong point."

"If this Maquis business isn't got under control soon, it could jeopardize the whole Federation-Cardassian treaty, don't you think, Garak?"

"Ah, my dear doctor, such weighty matters are hardly the concern of a mere tailor." Garak set down his glass of rokassa juice and leaned forward. "Now what did you make of that latest Enigma Tale I lent you..."

So, even Dukat isn't a big enough fool to the military's way of thinking, Garak reflected while turning his outward attention to the young doctor's litany of complaints against the Cardassian concept of guilt. Really, Central Command had mishandled this treaty with the Federation abysmally. Everyone on Cardassia knew that it was just a stopgap measure, a way to buy time until the military could regroup sufficiently to take back the disputed territories. From the outset, however, they had practically announced the deception openly. One attempt after another to smuggle weapons or subvert the terms of the agreement kept coming to light. No one had even prevented that psychotic sadist Madred, who'd washed out of Obsidian Order training after the second day, from playing his sick little games with one of the most respected commanders in Starfleet. The Federation apparently wanted the treaty to hold just as badly as Central Command did--that was Cardassia's only salvation to this point. But if this Maquis business wasn't contained, how long would it be before the Federation decided to back its own renegade citizens in a struggle against a supposed ally who kept violating negotiated agreements. The Federation had a huge overinvestment in the notion of fair play. They were more likely to turn on cheaters than assassins, Garak sometimes thought.

This continued blundering could only hasten the success of the dissidents' cause. Yet a Cardassia run by well-meaning civilians would present an inviting target, especially if it managed to antagonize the Federation to the extent that Starfleet would sit back and let another power occupy Cardassia as it had allowed the Cardassians to occupy Bajor. The best hope for these uncertain times was a quadrant whose other powers were hesitant to get on the wrong side of the Federation, and a Cardassia whose independence the Federation supported. Therefore this current crisis with the Maquis must be defused at once...

"Excuse me, doctor," Garak interrupted his charming companion. "I've just remembered that I scheduled a private fitting for Morn back at my shop. We'll finish our literary discussion at next week's lunch."

Garak hurried back to his shop but did not change the sign at the entrance from "closed" to "open." Instead he went to the computer and hacked into Odo's security files, which were still protected by Cardassian encryption matrices. He soon found the data he sought, the arrest report for the Vulcan Maquis fighter, Sakona. Vulcan, my eye ridges, he snorted. He downloaded the file and then ran it through his own database of all known Tal Shiar agents in the quadrant. It only took thirty seconds to come up with a match. She was a Romulan operative, code name Naakent. Garak sometimes wondered if there were any members of the Maquis who weren't someone's undercover agent provocateur. To forestall any significant damage to Cardassian interests, the Order had infiltrated the rebels with some of their surgically altered, deep cover "Bajoran" agents left over from the Occupation; the Tal Shiar was more than happy to sow discord within Federation ranks; and Starfleet Intelligence itself was actually recruiting members into a number of purposely inept guerrilla cells.

All Tal Shiar field agents had tiny bioelectric transmitters implanted within their ear canals. Any transmission source could access them, provided you knew the Tal Shiar frequency and the agent's identification code. Garak, of course, knew them. He took about five minutes to compose his message. It needed to be short and to the point, leaving no room for misinterpretation. Finally satisfied, he tapped it out on his comm system: "Naakent. I know who you are, what you are, and where you are. Find some convincing way to reveal the Maquis target to the Federation within thirteen hours, or I will pay you a visit. Remember how the Obsidian Order dealt with Leeratak." He could have used the names of any number of Tal Shiar assassinated by the Cardassians, but it seemed fitting somehow to cite the fate of that woman with the annoying grandchild.

"So, doctor, did you find 'Meditations on a Crimson Shadow' more to your liking?" Garak inquired as Bashir downed the last forkful of his lunch.

"Well, it certainly moved faster, and the speculations on what might bring Cardassia and the Klingons to blows were quite intriguing. Although I hope the author doesn't have inside information on Cardassian plans to challenge the Klingon empire."

"I'm sure he doesn't or he wouldn't be one of our greatest living authors," Garak said with a smile. "I fear the Central Command is far too divided amongst itself at present to be launching any pre-emptive strikes against our belligerent neighbors. Preloc's account of superior Cardassian strategy prevailing over the brute ferocity of the Klingons does persuade though, doesn't it?"

"I just hope we don't have to test his theories in the near future," Bashir replied evasively. "Now that the Maquis activity has subsided, at least for the time being, I'm ready for a little peace and quiet in this sector."

"That's not likely, is it, with the election of the Bajoran Kai coming up in the next few weeks?"

The doctor laughed. "I imagine Commander Sisko and the Major would rather face an army of Klingons than have to deal with Vedek Winn as the spiritual leader of Bajor."

"Is that a possible outcome?" Garak tried to make the question sound casual. "The Emissary clearly favors Vedek Bareil, and he was Kai Opaka's choice, too, or so I've heard from the Bajoran customers in my shop. One word from Captain Sisko, and I'm sure he won't have to worry about dealing with Winn."

Bashir's nostrils flared as they always did when a bout of Federation self-righteousness was imminent. "No Starfleet officer would ever attempt to influence the self-determination of an independent people."

Garak affected shock. "But my dear doctor, it is the only way to keep up alliances in the long term. I never cease to be amazed that your Federation holds itself together at all."

That had been an informative meal, Garak thought to himself with satisfaction as he worked on doing some alterations in his shop. If the Emissary withheld a formal endorsement of Bareil, the outcome was not quite a foregone conclusion. When Bashir had managed to obtain the medical information necessary to save his life, Garak had taken it as a sign that the Order indeed still had a use for him. The doctor had been very coy about the source of the information, claiming that he could be every bit as evasive as his patient had been. But the bottom line was, no one would have dared let Cardassian physiological specifications into Starfleet hands unless Tain had permitted it. Garak heaved a deep sigh. Why wouldn't Tain just come out and tell him what he was supposed to do? At the very least, he concluded, being the only Cardassian on the spot as one of his people's most implacable enemies chose a new leader, he knew he had a responsibility to influence the outcome to the best of his abilities.

The tailor had watched the selection process with keen interest thus far, trying to determine which candidate would be more advantageous to Cardassian interests. Bareil was more likely to preach forgiveness toward his people's former masters, but he was even more likely to embrace the Federation. Garak was sure that the conflict between Cardassia and the Maquis would eventually flare up again, indeed escalate. The Maquis were far too reminiscent of the Bajoran Resistance in his opinion, and a Federation of which Bajor was a part still seemed to him the more grievous threat, likely to tip the scales against maintaining the treaty those idiots in Central Command kept so transparently violating. Besides, Bareil was a man of principle, and they were always dangerous. Winn, on the other hand, was driven by self-serving ambition, much easier to deal with. Indeed Central Command had already tricked her once, during that affair with Jaro. Yes, Garak decided, she was the candidate he would back.

But how? Men of principle were also hard to discredit. He went through his files, looking for something the Order might have on Bareil's conduct during the Occupation. Few people who had lived through it, Major Kira was always saying, had come out with clean hands. Unfortunately if there were any stain on Bareil's, the Order hadn't found out about it--making it highly unlikely that there was a stain. Still there had been something; he was sure of it Garak searched his memory. Oh, yes. His debriefing of that tiresome collaborator Kubus. The man never stopped justifying himself, bringing up countless Bajorans celebrated as heroes after the Cardassian withdrawal whom he insisted were just as much collaborators as he was. One of the names he had mentioned was Bareil, something about the Kendra Valley operation. It might be nothing, but the rumor itself could be all that Vedek Winn needed.

Garak opened his encrypted subspace channel to his contact on Cardassia Prime. The contact allowed access, more proof that Tain was depending upon him. "Darkot, Garak here," he tapped out in code. "You know our Bajoran guest, the former Secretary Kubus, constantly pining away for his homeland--" the irony of it made Garak wince as transmitted those words. He took a deep breath and banished the roiling emotions. "I think it's time that his Cardassian friends encouraged him to assuage his homesickness, rather than warning him of the consequences of an attempted repatriation."

III. Searching for a Way Out

Bashir had barely touched his food as he chattered on and on about the big news. Odo had found his people, and could you believe it, they were the Founders of the Dominion, and they had used some kind of mind probe to run a simulation of possible Federation and Romulan reactions to the Dominion's trying to establish a presence in the Alpha Quadrant. The doctor hurriedly took a bite of his salad and then paused to look directly at his lunchtime companion. "And the funny thing, Garak, in that simulation, you were the first person to realize what the Dominion was up to. Central Command was as enthusiastic as Starfleet, but you knew we couldn't trust the Founders. It was you and Commander Sisko together who hatched the plan to collapse the entrance to the wormhole."

"Really?" The news had filled Garak with dread, but he feigned amusement. "And we then returned to the station, and everyone hailed me as a hero?"

"Uh, no." Bashir lowered his eyes. "You were killed helping us evade the Jem'Hadar."

"Was this martyrdom of mine your contribution to the narrative, my dear doctor?"

"I don't think so. But it was hard to tell. We all seemed to be thinking the very same thoughts. It's as if the Dominion had artificially recreated in our minds this Great Link the Changelings have, in which each individual shares the consciousness of all."

"Well, then, I'll content myself with imagining that our Romulan friend imagined my demise," Garak bantered. More likely Commander Sisko, he huffed to himself. "The technology does sound fascinating. One can imagine innumerable uses it might have for an ambitious galactic power."

"Or an agent of the Obsidian Order?" Bashir teased.

"The next time I chat with one, I will ask him," Garak returned with a smirk.

For the first time since he had been freed from the endorphin implant, Garak wished he had it back. All his plans had been for nothing, and the fear was making him tremble as if he were wedged into some dark, narrow crevice rather than reclining on his own bed. He had thought that the balance of power in the sector, the balance he had so carefully worked to attain, was at its optimum for Cardassia, whether a civilian government took hold or the Central Command continued along its faction-riddled, blundering way. But he had only taken Alpha Quadrant politics into account. How foolish he had been. There was a doorway into another quadrant, and a shadowy empire beyond it. Had he really imagined that the Dominion would remain content on its side of the wormhole? And the divide and conquer tactics they had run past the Defiant's officers couldn't bode worse for Cardassia. True, in this particular version, it was the Romulans who were made the odd man out and driven to attack the Federation and its Dominion allies. The presence of a Romulan test subject determined that scenario. In reality, though, the Dominion might turn any power against another. Neither a peace-loving government run by Cardassian dissidents or the current collection of incompetent Guls at Central Command would be ready for another all-out shooting war. Cardassia versus the Klingons, for example, would never have the result Preloc imagined, not in these uncertain times.

Despite the anxiety, he drifted off to sleep. In his dreams he was back in the house on Romulus, creeping up behind Leeratak, knife at the ready. When he stuck it in, however, the dripping blood turned to amber gelatin, and she soon had him immobilized in a net of golden bonds. "Make sure none of his kind are left alive when we have conquered," the Changeling said, glancing over her captive's shoulder. Garak too looked toward the door, and there he saw one of those strange elfin creatures the Founders employed to be the face of the Dominion to the rest of the galaxy. "I always do what the Founders want," it replied in a smug child's voice.

Garak awoke screaming. The only hope was to eradicate the Great Link utterly. With Tain retired and himself in exile, who would have the resolve to do it? *It had better be someone* he thought grimly, as he poured with trembling hands this evening's first, and decidedly not its last, glass of Quark's wretched kanar.